


How Haruka Became the Sea

by beifomg



Category: Free!
Genre: ETA: i tagged makoharu haha h a. hhaha, Gen, think of puppies and rainbows and baby makoto instead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2015-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-05 19:35:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4192302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beifomg/pseuds/beifomg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Haruka is fearless, stubbornly keeping his eyes shut, an ear pressed against the cold glass of the window. </p><p>However, let me tell you a secret that we all know: Haruka is only human.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Haruka Became the Sea

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first ever Free! fic. \:D/ I do not own Free! or any of its characters.

Haruka leaves the clocks--one, two, (another one in the kitchen) three in total--in his house unchecked and subsists under the pretense that they are, indeed, ticking away. _Tick, tock_ , the clocks do not say. But Haruka--Haruka does not care, or at least, people think he doesn't care. It's okay. It's alright because they don't know him. All they know are functional clocks, ticking and tocking their humans into the deceiving whirlpool of time. He knows better because he knows how to believe something's there when it isn't. So, presumably, the clocks go _tick, tock, tick, tock,_ even while Haruka is asleep to hear them not move.

Haruka never opens the curtains of his house. What is there to see? Just roof and sky and land and life. And sometimes, brief sometimes, he forgets how it is to breathe out in a world of sunshine, choosing instead to submerge himself in a bathtub of stasis. He's used to it, he thinks. Always, every day, the pads of his fingers turn wrinkly, old, and ugly. And in those times, something about Haruka's ticks and tocks seems off but he shrugs it off. He isn't aging, no, he is only drowning.

But there are special instances when the prunes of his fingers draw the curtains open. He opens them where he can clearly see the thunderstorms brewing. Thunderstorm after thunderstorm, he discovers how to breathe with the flashes of light, how to not waver from the roars of the thunder. Closing his eyes, a scene, almost automatically, paints itself under his eyelids--waves, angry waves, waves in turmoil that speak of Death, Death that hovers under the moon, Death that prefers to sweep in with the waves and kidnaps its hopelessly estranged captives. Death makes aliens out of human beings, carves ghosts out of flesh and blood. Haruka is fearless, stubbornly keeping his eyes shut, an ear pressed against the cold glass of the window. 

However, let me tell you a secret that we all know: _Haruka is only human._

Haruka was born with eyes like clear water. Akin to the orbs that the local glassmith turns and heats into solidity, stability--the tiptoe of fragility. Haruka, Haruka, Haruka--the name means distant. Haruka, Haruka, Haruka--the person is closed off. There is no spring. There are no seasons. Just the rolling in and out of furious ocean waves. They engulf him until his eyes don't shine like the stars anymore, parade him over wave after wave as if he's a sacrificial offering to the god of thunder. He begs them to please, to _please please please_ , swallow him. Swallow his heart. Swallow him whole. Take him underwater where he can't distinguish his tears. Take him underwater where Death might extinguish the sorrow, the nightmares, the impossible, irrefutable, and still unbelievable pain. Before pain, before sorrow, before the dark, there was light. But now there is only nothing, a harrowing, life-sucking void that spits into his face every time he awakes and goes with the make-believe that it is morning and not midnight. His sheets are soaked with sweat and his heartbeat runs rampant in its cage. _Where can I escape?_

Haruka shivers. He panics. There is suddenly an influx of ice. He's on his toes, trying to swim away, but he can't. He's frozen, he's screaming, a blood-curdling plea making its way through his vocal chords but never emerging. No escape. No escape. No warmth. The ice doesn't slow down; It cannot linger just to melt displeased. It's a fast learner--it crawls up Haruka's calves, walks up his hipbones, trips into his skin, runs up his cheeks. _There is no warmth to escape to_ , it seems to be taunting him. Tears pool in his glassy eyes, but right before the ice catches his lungs in its fatal embrace he chokes out,

**"Makoto!"**

_It's meaningless without you._

**Author's Note:**

> This fic stemmed from me seeing one of the clocks in my house not working. Angst and Hurt were like, "Oooooooh~!" [grabby hands]. The end.  
> The title is a reference to Owl City's How I Became the Sea.


End file.
